


(Under) Pressure Cooking

by Ghoulboyboos



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Chaos, Cooking, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 07:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16237268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghoulboyboos/pseuds/Ghoulboyboos
Summary: “Ryan.” Shane says simply. “Your mother said that an adult has to learn how to cook. It’s just something youdo.Like taxes and laundry and learning the consequences of drinking after turning thirty.” Ryan makes a noise of complaint at that, but he doesn’t call it a terrible idea a forth time, so Shane continues: “This recipe was in a list of stress-free plans for a successful dinner party. I’m sure even people likeuscan do this.”-Ryan and Shane try to hold a dinner party.





	(Under) Pressure Cooking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gh0stly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gh0stly/gifts).



“This is a terrible idea, we’re _so_ going to ruin everything,” Ryan says for the third time in the last ten minutes and Shane has to take a deep breath and brace himself on the kitchen counter. He rarely does this. Ryan _never_ does this. But  inviting friends to dinner is what couples _do_ , apparently, at least it’s what both their parents chastised them about.

 

“I don’t know why we can’t just order something.” Ryan is scrolling through the recipe on Shane’s tablet again. “We set the dinner table and put on music and order at a little Italian place or whatever. We can be perfect hosts, I’m sure. Where in the book of couple things is it written that you have to _cook_ the dinner you invite people to?”

“Ryan.” Shane says simply. “Your mother said that an adult has to learn how to cook. It’s just something you _do._ Like taxes and laundry and learning the consequences of drinking after turning thirty.” Ryan makes a noise of complaint at that, but he doesn’t call it a terrible idea a forth time, so Shane continues: “ This recipe was in a list of stress-free plans for a successful dinner party. I’m sure even people like _us_ can do this.”

Ryan doesn’t look convinced,  but he leans against the counter too and stares at the recipe. It really doesn’t look too daunting to Shane. He has cooked before, but usually simple things. The most time consuming thing had been a casserole and most of the time had been spent waiting  for it while it was in the oven .

“I still don’t see the point.” Ryan grumbles, glowering at the tablet.

Shane sighs softly and wraps an arm around Ryan’s waist. He doesn’t need to tug much to get Ryan to lean against his side, even though Ryan makes a big show of trying to twist out of if.

“The way I see it,” Shane begins, turning his face to lean his chin on Ryan’s head, “is that our parents all think that we’re a serious thing. We’re about to shoot the next season of _Unsolved_ as an official couple!  Our viewers know we’re in a relationship now and that’s a big step. We moved in this place together. You know that my mom and dad reminded me to bring you with the next time I visit them. And your mom kept calling you a lot to make you promise you would bring me over. Even your dad-” Shane snorts for a moment. “He’s a fun guy. He gave me a joking version of the “talk” and he told me-”

 

He suddenly pauses, because he meant to make Ryan laugh and soften and warm up to the idea of cooking together, but suddenly, he feels a little overwhelmed by his own emotions. Ryan seems to notice. He leans back to look up at Shane.

“If he told you that he knows how to load and shoot a shotgun, he’s lying. He never touched a gun in his life, Shane.”

Shane feels a smile spread on his face and chuckles.  It doesn’t quite help with the sudden shyness.

“No, I…” He looks at Ryan and feels the fondness in his heart take residence in his face, too. “He told me that he saw you in all walks of life, but he rarely saw you _this_ happy. So, he figured I must be doing something right and that I should be aware of…  uh… how serious this is.”

Without meaning to, Shane swallows. Ryan’s eyes have gone wide and his smile is dimming a little when surprise spreads over his features. Since Ryan has a nice bronze tone, he doesn’t show a blush as much as Shane does, but Shane could still swear that there is a bit of pink taking over Ryan’s features as he keeps staring at Shane.

Shane is about to clear his throat and shrug it off when Ryan pushes up on his tiptoes and leans in to kiss him. It’s a lingering, warm kiss and Ryan holds onto Shane’s shoulder, clinging to him just a little.

When Ryan pulls back, he’s beaming.

“Come on, big guy. Let’s be a proper, adult couple and prepare a dinner. Our friends aren’t going to know what hit them!”

 

-

 

They invited Curly and Jen, because they were the first people at Buzzfeed who knew about the shift in their relationship from best friends to… boyfriends. Everything was still new and fresh and raw. One evening of sudden, heightened emotions and whispered confessions on a balcony of the venue Buzzfeed booked for whatever wrap-up party they had been at and everything had changed. Shane remembers how huge Ryan’s eyes had looked in the lights of L.A. at night and how he couldn’t stop holding Ryan’s wrist while he stammered his way through a bunch of confessions at once that built up to the big one, the important one. _I fell in love with you._ Their voices had become  even more hushed, sharing moments they both had experienced over the past years, but from new angles and point of views. The stolen glances, the lingering touches, everything that somehow fell under the radar and when they kissed for the first time, Shane felt the anxiety drain out of his body, any fear that he made a mistake suddenly gone.

Of course, Ryan was still afraid. Not about them being together, as he reassured Shane over and over. But he couldn’t help worrying about other things.

Ryan had been scared to _share_ with others and talk about it at first and Shane understood. It was Ryan’s first relationship with a man and nearly everyone in his social circle just assumed that he was straight as an arrow. Shane had suggested to talk to people who were already out and proud and Ryan had slowly felt more at ease with the idea.

As Shane expected, their friends had been ecstatic. Curly had lurched into a string of Spanish that Shane didn’t understand but caused Ryan  to sweat a little and finally hiss at Curly something that sounded suspiciously like “Shut the hell up” . Jen had given them both a hug and sheepishly admitted that she had always thought that something might happen between them, but then blamed it on her projecting  things .  Shane would have laughed, but Ryan was still jumpy and unsure, so instead he put an arm around his boyfriend and hugged him  tightly .

 

Steven and Andrew had been invited as a bit of a challenge. Of course, they are their friends and they had known about the shift in Shane’s and Ryan’s relationship for a while, but also they were so used to eating professionally made food, some of it more expensive than their paychecks would allow, that it would be a little harder to impress them. Of course Ryan would worry about that. Shane doesn’t even try to pretend that he doesn’t feel nervous as well.

Still,  he is determined to pull this off right . When they moved in together it had been a quiet and private situation and they never actually had a housewarming party, which had been fine until their parents had picked up on it. Shane vaguely suspected his parents and Ryan’s parents to be in contact if not cahoots, because they just kept telling both of them what to do in order to be a good host and friend, whether the ghoulfriends wanted it or not.  It could have been funny, until Ryan started to worry that they actually were bad at being adults and friends and then he quickly started to fret about a proper dinner party and Shane had become wrapped up in the preparations of it.

 

He doesn’t really care about it that much, but he cares when Ryan gets anxious and worried about things because Shane tries to prevent exactly that. During _Unsolved_ and in their personal life. So, in order to make this a pleasant evening for Ryan, Shane had to take over the planning a little bit. He doesn’t really mind.

 

-

 

“Let’s just start with the onions.” Shane says as he puts two cutting boards and the knife block on the kitchen island. Ryan fiddles with his phone and after a couple of seconds, music fills the room. Shane suggests that Ryan picked the playlist he usually puts on when he cleans the house or does the laundry. He doesn’t really mind. It’s mostly fun songs and it will probably help Ryan relax a little.

 

They wash their hands and sit down across from each other at the island. Shane starts to peel the first onion, acutely aware of Ryan’s eyes on his hands. He hears the sound of the knife slicing off the tip of the onion that Ryan picked and Shane looks up as Ryan fiddles and starts to peel it. His expression is serious, as if he’s preparing ghost hunting equipment and Shane bites back a laugh as he looks down again, not wanting to cut himself.

He slices his onion in half and waits till Ryan does the same before he gains his attention.

“The way I learned it is to just hold the half and then slice it two times-” He pauses to cut the half into thirds. Sixths? Whatever. Then he holds it and starts slicing it into cut up rings. The first hint of the biting scent hits his nostrils and he already feels his eyes sting and start to water. Ryan across from him slowly mirrors Shane’s actions and soon enough, they’re chopping away relatively smoothly. They are also crying like their favorite show released an especially emotional season finale. Shane sniffs harshly to keep his nose from running and looks up at Ryan’s reddened eyes. His boyfriend brings up the arm holding the knife and Shane freezes in slight fear as he sees Ryan use his sleeve to dry his eyes, knife held up in the air not too far from his ear.

“Jesus, Ryan. Don’t fucking do that, you’re gonna end up like Van Gogh!” He exclaims once the knife is out of Ryan’s face again. He’s met with a confused stare, so Shane uses his (empty!) hand to gesture towards the knife. “Don’t swing that through the air! You’re gonna cut yourself.”

Ryan blinks at the knife as if he hadn’t considered that.

“Sorry man.” His voice is a little roughened and Shane thinks for a moment he really looks like he’d been crying, which stings more than the onions. “This sucks. Why did you pick onion soup?!”

Shane laughs a bit and returns to his own cutting board. His left eye stings so much he can’t really open it and it is really annoying. “They said it would be easy...” He tries to defend himself.

Ryan makes a mocking sound and drops the knife to rip a paper towel off the roll and wipe his eyes.

“It would be easy they said. Just cutting some onions they said.” Ryan mocks with the paper muffling his voice. Shane wheezes despite the tears rolling down his face and continues chopping.

 

There is a little emergency where Shane wipes his cheek dry out of reflex and rubs his apparently onion juice stained knuckle against his eye. The next minute, the kitchen is filled with Shane’s anguished yelling, Ryan’s panicked screaming and the sound of running water while Ryan is literally holding Shane under the tap to clear his eye, not only getting Shane’s hair soaked in the process but also almost flooding the kitchen.

 

“You didn’t have to waterboard me! You’re actually trying to kill me, are you?!”

“I panicked! I thought you were going to lose your eye!”

“It’s onion juice, Ryan, not hydrochloric acid!”

“Well next time I’ll just sit and watch you suffer, then! Alright!”

“You already do that every spirit box session, what would change?”

“Hey fuck you, the spirit box is an actual scienti-”

“If you say scientific I will throw the spirit box in the onion soup!”

“What, you’d drive all the way to Buzzfeed just to-”

“Yes, yes I _would.”_

 

They almost pause there, ready to stare at each other with flaring nostrils but then Ryan’s playlist starts Weird Al Yankovic’s Michael Jackson parody “Eat it” and it’s hard being mad at your boyfriend while the kitchen smells of onions and Weird Al lists a lot of things you should shove in your face.

Shane cracks first. He feels his eyes crinkle as he touches his mouth and giggles while Ryan’s face splits into his brilliant grin before he doubles over with a wheeze. Just like that, things are alright again.

Ryan gets Shane a towel and ruffles his hair dry while Shane sits at the kitchen island and chops the last couple of onions.

 

Ryan starts melting the butter while Shane opens the chicken broth and fills a glass with water. Soon, the smell of cooking onions chases away the biting scent of the freshly cut, raw ones. Ryan is stirring the pan, but he already seems a bit less panicky.

“I still can’t believe this is going to take an _hour_ , why would we cook onions for that long?”

“Because they get all soft and mushy and create a great soup that will knock Steven’s socks off and then you can gloat and sneer at him. That’s why.” Shane says, while he is rereading the recipe and grabbing garlic to slice that next.

There is a long pause only filled with music and the sound of bubbling onions.

“Alright. Good reason.” Ryan finally says and Shane laughs and kisses his cheek before sitting back down to peel the garlic.

 

The next hour passes peacefully. They prepare the seasoning, Shane salts the chicken breasts and they only make a couple of childish jokes about it. Ryan grates the cheese. He almost grates his fingertip at one point but Shane grabs his wrist just in time.

 

“I told you I would have stopped, Shane, I’m not a child.”

“Mh.” Shane hums, not convinced as he checks Ryan’s fingertips and presses a kiss to them, making Ryan stutter. “Keep those hands intact, Ry, I am very fond of them.”

Ryan makes a sound like “Psssh” but he smiles a bit as he cleans out the grater before putting the cheese aside.

 

When the onions are ready, they add more broth and Shane throws the garlic and thyme in while Ryan lets the tablespoons of flour snow over everything. It starts to smell delicious and Shane catches a gleam in Ryan’s eye that is familiar to him. It’s the look Ryan gets when things are working out. Whether it’s research, their banter during _Unsolved_ or whenever Ryan catches Shane unaware with affectionate gestures. It’s Ryan’s look of “This is working out, this is going well!” and it causes Shane to feel ridiculously soft. Maybe it’s the random love song playing in the back or the way that Ryan’s face is flushed from the heat of leaning over the pan, but something flutters in Shane’s chest. He almost wishes they didn’t expect guests. They could have a quiet night in with delicious food. But duty calls. Not loud enough for him to not touch Ryan’s cheek until the other man looks at him. Shane decides, there is always time to share a few kisses while the pan deglazes.

 

Shane browns the chicken, Ryan boils the mix while adding vinegar and mustard and they both look up at the same time to check the time.

 

“We gotta hurry if we want to shower and get dressed.” Ryan remarks and Shane nods, checking the recipe again.

“It’s almost ready to put in the oven, we can both get ready in the span of 20 minutes, right?”

“Sure!” Ryan says, sounding anything but.

 

-

 

Of course they can’t get ready in time. Shane is fresh out of the shower and putting on his pink shirt when he hears something clatter, fall and clang loudly in the kitchen and he’s immediately running.

 

Ryan’s phone is playing Low Rider, the happy and relaxed beat in stark contrast with the set of pots and pans cluttering the floor. Ryan is currently searching through the cabinet that held these pots and pans before, searching frantically for-

“What are you doing?” Shane calls out in confusion, becoming aware that he’s just wearing his shirt, his boxers and his socks, not really the best kitchen attire.

“I can’t find the oven gloves.” Ryan turns around, a wild look in his eyes. “If we don’t take the pan out soon the chicken is going to go all dry and the cheese will burn and-” Shane can see the idea pop into Ryan’s head when his boyfriend’s face takes on grim determination.

“Ryan don’t you dare-” He makes his way across the clutter on socked feet, trying not to slip while also going as fast as possible because Ryan is rolling up his sleeves and making his way to the oven and pops it open-

Shane grabs onto Ryan’s shoulder and pulls him back before his boyfriend can do the most stupid thing in the world and burn both his hands by grabbing a pan heated up to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. There is a short struggle that Shane knows he isn’t going to win because Ryan is much stronger, so he tries his way with words:

“Don’t do this you lunatic you’ll only hurt yourself! And if you somehow don’t care about _that_ , in which case, wow, bad priorities, then what the hell do you think the guests will think?!” He looks around quickly and spots the sweater Ryan had been wearing this morning hang from one of the chairs. It’s one of Shane’s sweaters because Ryan loves stealing the oversized ones and because Ryan is always cold. Shane grabs it and yanks it off, effectively toppling the chair in the process. He shoves it in Ryan’s hands with a growl.

“At least use this, you mad man.”

Ryan doesn’t comment, he simply wraps the sweater around the pan and lifts it out. Shane spots how nicely browned the cheese is and how the chicken is bubbling in the onion mix before Ryan drops it on the now cold stove. Then he tosses the sweater aside and moves everything around it out of the way. Shane kicks the oven shut and turns it off and they both bend over the pan, staring at their creation with baited breaths.

 

“It looks… amazing.” Ryan finally says. Shane only nods.

The pan is filled with the divine smelling broth of chicken and onions, with the pieces of chicken breast sitting in the bubbling mix, topped with melted and browned cheese and the sight is simply amazing.

They are torn from their reverie when the doorbell rings and Ryan jumps nearly a foot into the air.

He runs for the door, before stopping halfway and returning to grab the wine bottle they wanted to have opened already. He starts frantically looking for the glasses.

Shane grabs him by the shoulder and manages to steady him. Ryan deflates just a little bit.

 

“You let in our guests, I’m gonna get dressed and then open the wine. It’s okay. Make some small talk. Show them the pictures we hung up in the hall. You’ll manage.”

Ryan takes a deep breath and slowly, steadily breathes out.

 

“Okay.”

He pushes on his tiptoes and kisses Shane’s jaw quickly, before turning and going for the door.

Shane puts the wine aside and quickly makes his way into the bedroom to grab some pants.

 

-

 

The evening goes well. By the time their guests are upstairs, the boys have put back the scattered pots and pants, everyone is dressed appropriately and the wine has been poured in six glasses. Six identical wine glasses that Shane’s parents gave them as a housewarming gift because the rest of Ryan’s and Shane’s glassware was randomly cluttered soda cups and a single wine glass, too comically large to be used in company.

 

Despite all their friends being the type for it, there is not a single dry comment from their guests. Instead, Shane feels surprisingly at ease chatting with their friends about the move, about how they had made their different types of furniture fit together and how surprisingly difficult it had been to build the new bed they got from Ikea.

 

The dinner is… good. Shane finds himself thinking he might have overseasoned the broth or that the chicken is a little too dry, but even Steven is shutting that worry down quickly. It’s a good evening. There is good food and wine and laughter and Curly makes a couple of comments that cause Ryan to flush and Andrew to roll his eyes. They hang out a bit afterwards and chat about work before it’s time for everyone to leave.

 

When Shane closes the apartment door behind them, he can barely turn around before Ryan grabs his face and kisses him hard. Ryan had looked exhausted a moment before, but now he seems bright and energetic. He pulls back slowly to grin at Shane.

“I’d say that went well.”

Shane wraps his arms around Ryan’s waist.

“Very well in my opinion! We did great. They were all super impressed.”

“Think I can show off to my mom with that?” Ryan asks and Shane snorts.

“Sure, why not. You can embellish a little. And maybe not mention the almost accidents.”

“You’re over-exaggerating,” Ryan scoffs as they slowly let go and wander back to the kitchen to start with the dishes. The cheese encrusted pan is going to be a pain.

“I’m not exaggerating. You would have burned your hands off to save dinner. I appreciate the dedication but I still think you’re a fucking dumbass.”

Ryan just flicks him off with a laugh as he collects the plates. Shane turns on the water in the sink and fills it with soap bubbles. He’s about to reach for the empty pan they put on the stove when he pauses and stares.

 

“What?” Ryan asks. He’s standing next to Shane, a stack of plates in his hands, ready to dunk them in soap water. Shane can’t talk, he merely points his chin at the stove.

 

There, safely tucked under the now empty pan, are the oven gloves.

Together, they stare at them for a while, before the first of them breaks into a wheeze.

 

-

 

“Despite everything,” Ryan says later, his head tucked against Shane’s chest as they are cuddled up together in bed, “Not bad.”

“Not bad at all.” Shane agrees. “So… same thing next week?”

“No way.” Ryan says and rolls over to turn off the light. “We can talk about making it a monthly thing. Not even _I_ want to impress my mom that much.”

Shane laughs and curls up on his side, pulling Ryan close.

“Alright. Same thing next month, then.” He yawns. “Being a proper adult is exhausting.”

“You tell me.” Ryan mutters. “No idea how our parents do it.”

“Eh.” Shane hums and nuzzles Ryan’s hair. “Years of experience, I assume.”

“Probably.” Ryan wraps an arm around Shane’s middle. “Looks like we have a long way to go.”

 

Shane smiles down at him, Ryan’s eyes look large in bit of light that falls in through the curtains. He kisses Ryan’s brow.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll figure this shit out. Together we can do anything.”


End file.
